6. Castor
Castor
His mouth is on my palm and I am being taken apart.
That is the only way I have to say it. For three hundred years I have been a fixed thing, a held thing, a wall, and now this small warm man has pressed his lips to the centre of my hand and something is coming undone in me that I did not know was tied.
The sound I make frightens me. It is loud.
It is mine. It comes up out of the place in my chest where the binding sits and it shakes the candle flame and Wes does not flinch from it, Wes looks up at me with his eyes gone dark and says, low, “Good. That’s good. Let me hear it.”
No one has ever wanted to hear me.
“Wes,” I say. His name. The thing I wore smooth in the stone. “I don’t, it’s too much, I can’t…”
“You can,” he says. “You’re allowed. That’s the whole thing, Castor. You’re allowed to want this. Nobody’s going to take it back.”
And he opens my fingers one at a time, careful of the claws, and presses his mouth to the pad of each one, the soft heat of his lips against skin that has only ever known carving and rain, and at every touch the sound in my chest climbs, and the heat rolls off me stronger, and low in my body, lower than the chest, lower than I have ever let myself feel, something is waking that I have no name for.
A tightening. A heaviness. A want with a place to go.
He works his way down the inside of my wrist, where the skin is finer, where I did not know I could feel anything at all, and he sets his teeth there, gentle, barely, a graze, and the sound that comes out of me is so loud the pigeons go up in the triforium in a clap of wings.
He stops. Looks up. Checking. Always checking.
“Too much?” he asks.
“No,” I say, and my voice is gravel and wreck. “More. I didn’t, Wes, I didn’t know there was feeling there. I’ve been wrist and bone and stone for three hundred years and you found a place I didn’t know I had.”
“There’s a lot of you you don’t know,” he says, low, and his breath moves over the wet trail his mouth has left and I shudder the whole length of me. “Lucky for both of us I’m thorough.”
I have a body. I have always known I have a body; I have lived in it three centuries. But I have never had a body that wanted, and now it wants, suddenly, hugely, and I am ashamed and astonished and I cannot stop it.
Wes feels it. Of course he does; he reads me like the stone. His eyes move down me, slow, the working attention, and they reach the heavy place where the want has gathered, and he goes still.
“Oh,” he says softly. “There you are.”
“I don’t,” I start, and the shame closes my throat. “I’ve never, it’s never…”
“Hey.” He comes up close, both hands flat on my chest now, over the sound, grounding me.
The heat of me must be fierce this near but he doesn’t pull back, he leans into it.
“Look at me. There’s nothing wrong with you.
Your body’s doing exactly what it’s meant to.
You’ve just never been let. That’s all. You’ve never been let. ”
“Three hundred years,” I say, and it comes out wrecked. “And I never once…”
“I know.” He presses his forehead to mine, careful of the horns, his small skull against my great one. “I know. We’ve got all night. Let me.”
He moves down me.
I am crouched on the flags with my wings folded high and my claws curled safe and my whole grey body trembling like the membrane of a wing in wind, and Wes kneels between my haunches where they fold, and he looks up at me once, checking, I understand now, always checking, the thing no one ever did for me, and I make myself say it, because he taught me I’m allowed: “Yes. Whatever it is. Yes.”
And he puts his mouth on me.
The sound I make is not a sound a building should survive.
It rolls up through the lantern tower and the candle gutters black and we are in the dark, just the grey window-light and the heat of me, and his mouth is hot and wet and certain on the part of me that has never been touched, the heavy stone-warm cock that the want gathered into, and the feeling is so enormous, so total, that for a moment I think the binding has broken, I think I’m coming apart into pieces on the cathedral floor.
“Wes…” I get out. “Wes, I can’t, it’s too…”
His hand finds mine in the dark and grips it.
Holds. Stay, the grip says, the thing he says to me every night.
Stay. I’ve got you. And his mouth never stops, slow and deep and worshipful in a way that is nothing like being prayed to, because being prayed to is a thing done at you and this is a thing done for you, and I have spent three centuries unable to tell the difference and now I know it in my bones.
I want to touch him. I’m terrified to touch him, the claws, the weight, the size of my hands against his small skull.
But the want is a flood now and I bring one shaking hand to the back of his head, claws fanned back off my fingers so not one can touch him, just the heel of my palm, just the heat of me cupping him while he takes me apart, and he makes a sound around me that I feel everywhere, and that’s the thing that does it, that he wants this too, that this isn’t a kindness he’s performing, that he’s hard in his own clothes and rocking into nothing while he gives this to me.
I learn his rhythm the way I learn the wind off the lead roof.
The pull of him, the heat, the slow deep work of his mouth, and the way he hums when he takes me deeper, a sound that goes through me like the organ’s lowest pipe.
My whole body has gone taut as a drawn bowstring and I do not know how to hold a feeling this large; I have spent three centuries holding still, and stillness is no use to me now.
My haunches shift on the cold flags. My wings strain at my shoulders, wanting to open, and I will them down, will them down, because if I open them in this small space I’ll put us in the dark and I want to keep watching the candle-glow on the back of his bent head.
“Wes,” I manage. “I’m, there’s a place it’s all going to. I can feel it gathering. I don’t, what do I…”
He lifts off me just enough to speak, his hand taking up the slow work his mouth was doing.
“You let it gather,” he says, rough, wrecked.
“And then you let it go. That’s all. That’s the whole secret.
Three hundred years and nobody told you that’s all it is.
” And then his mouth is back on me, and the gathering pulls tighter, unbearable, perfect.
The end comes up out of me like the dawn comes up, unstoppable, enormous, and far more welcome.
The sound in my chest goes to a roar and then to silence as it crests, and I spend three hundred years of held want into his hot mouth in the dark of the cathedral I have guarded since before his grandfather’s grandfather, and Wes takes all of it, every wracked pulse, his hand crushed in mine, and when it’s done I fold down over him, wings coming loose at last and curving around us both, caging us in warm grey dark, and I press my horned head to his shoulder and I shake.
“That’s,” I say. “That’s what it is.”
“That’s what it is,” he agrees, hoarse, wrecked, gathered up inside my wings with his arms around as much of me as he can reach. “Castor. Sweetheart. That’s only the start of what it is.”
And I hold him, careful, careful, and I do not let myself look at the windows, where the grey is still hours off but already, always, counting.